e e Uy ait ~ 19 Te ; 
Public Welfare and Public Utility Dervice 


Bulletin No. 4 


THE TELEPHONE 


Ol Ol 


Its History and Methods of Operation 


For Use of High School Students, 
Classes, and Current Topics Clubs 


Issued by 
ILLINOIS COMMITTEE on PUBLIC UTILITY INFORMATION 
203 South Dearborn Street - ~ - Chicago, Illinois 


1920 


Statistics Showing Remarkable Growth 
of the Industry 


The Beginning: 


Invented :—1876 by Alexander Graham Bell, an 
American. 7 


In 1877 there were but 778 telephones in the 
whole world. 


The Present: 


The United States Bureau of Census figures 
for 1917 (the last official government report) 
showed :— 

There were 53,234 separate telephone systems 
and lines in the United States. 

There were 28,827,188 miles of wire in the 
United States—enough to go around the earth at 
the equator 1,153 times. 

There were 11,716,520 telephones and 21,175 
public exchanges in use. 

The messages sent over these wires in 1917 
totalled 21,845,722,335, or approximately 211 mes- 
sages per year for each man, woman and child in 
the nation. 

The industry gave employment to 262,629 per- 
sons, whom with their families dependent upon 
their earnings for support, aggregated over 
1,000,000 persons. 

The plants and equipment cost the staggering 
total of $1,492,329,015, this amount representing 
the investment of the savings of between 600,000 
and 700,000 thrifty Americans to whom the in- 
dustry pays interest for use of their money, so 
that the public may have telephone service. 

(Note :—In the intervening three year period 
development has been rapid and present figures 
now greatly exceed the government statistics.) 


Hse Otek 
Growth of telephones in United States 1902- 
LOTS: 
1917 1902 
Number Companies + Saccon in te da 
Miles of wire. 2 eee 28,827,188 4,900,451 
Number telephones .................. 115716520 <2.315,297 


In 1902 the government reported 221,008 tele- 
phones in Illinois. In 1917 the number was 
1,070,997. In 1902 there were in use approxi- 
mately one telephone in use for each 24 of inhab- 
itants. In 1917 approximately one phone had 
been provided for each 5 men, women and chil- 
dren of the state. This in spite of the fact that 
the first telephone company in Illinois was not 
incorporated until 1881. 

+ 


Small Cost of the Telephone: 


The fact that through efficiency, economy and 
capable management it has been possible to give 
the public telephone service at a very small cost 
—utility costs are the smallest of all prices which 


the householder pays—has been the greatest fac- 
tor in bringing about universal use of the tele- 
phone. Like other utility services, the cost has 
been so low as to bring it within reach of the 
pocketbook of the most modest income, and this 
has resulted in the tremendous development of 
the service to the public. The part of the aver- 
age family’s income spent for the telephone is 
herewith shown as compared with other items 
of expenditure (figures being actual): 


Cent of Cent of 

Cost of Cost of 

Family Family 

Item Income Item Income 
Food -n. ee 26.8 STREET CAR ia 
Rent, duel 2 2- 22.9 GAS) 2a 0.9 
CiGthing? cee 15.3 TELEPHONE. 0.8 


Instirance = ..-25 44 *Miscellaneous .. 25.3 
ELECTRICITY «07 Total 23 100% 


*Miscellaneous includes vacation, entertainment, gifts 
and savings. 
*x * * 


How the Telephone Company 
Spends the Money You Pay: 


It costs great sums of money each year to give 
the United States its wonderful telephone serv- 
ice. The employees must be paid good wages, 
tremendous amounts of wire, cables, instruments, 
switchboards and countless other articles, as well 
as new buildings, must be put into service and 
investors must furnish an unbroken flow of 
money into the industry if this is to be accom- 
plished. If they did not, development of the 
telephone industry would stop and the present 
equipment would soon become obsolete and in- 
efficient. These thrifty investors must be paid 
liberally for the use of their money or they would 
invest it in other industry where the interest or 
conditions were more attractive. 

As an example of how the telephone company 
pays out for expenses the money the subscriber 
pays in for rental of his telephone, a. statement 
of the Bell System for the five months ended 
December 31, 1919, is herewith presented. In 
that period 49.7 cents or nearly one-half of each 
dollar it received was paid out for wages; 16.9 
cents was spent for materials for maintenance 
and replacements; 9.6 cents was paid as divi- 
dends to stockholders; 7.1 cents was necessary 
to meet interest on bonds and other borrowed 
money ; 4 cents was laid by to meet emergencies, 
such as destroyal of equipment by storms, fires, 
etc.; 2.8 cents went for advertising, insurance, 
accidents, damages and power; 1.6 cents was 
necessary for printing; 1.2 cents for maintenance 
of public stations and 1 cent for rent of offices 
and plant. 


THE TELEPHONE 


Introductory: 


When you lift the receiver from your telephone 
and casually discuss matters great or small with 
some unseen person perhaps only a few doors 
away from you; perhaps a hundred or even a 
thousand miles away, you naturally give little 
thought to the unseen forces, the wondrous in- 
vention, the years of painstaking development, or 
the great organizations of people, material and 
minds that have made this act of yours possible. 

Telephoning has become such an every-day or 
even every-hour occurrence in the modern rush 
oi our daily lives that it has become as ordinary 
and natural a thing for us to do as sitting down 
to our dinners, or glancing through our daily 
newspaper. 


Development of this Magic 


Method of Communication: 


Yet, behind this simple little act of lifting the 
telephone receiver from its hook and holding 
converse with some distant person, there is the 
story of a marvel so great as to almost put to 
shame the wonder of Aladdin’s Lamp or the en- 
trancing tales of the Arabian Nights. 

Beginning less than 50 years ago, the record 
and the development of the telephone has been so 
wonderlul, so vital in the affairs of man, that it 
has actually changed the course of human history 
and has played no small part in civilization of 
mankind. 

It is one of the wonders of the modern world, 
and no less wonderful simply because it has, by 
the rapidity of its development, become seem- 
ingly so commonplace. 


Vital Necessity to Progress: 


Throughout the ages the advancement of civil- 
ization of mankind has been vitally dependent 
upon progress in two great human needs; trans- 
portation and communication, the two of almost 
equal value in the affairs of the world. In the 
field of communication, the telephone represents 
one of the great strides forward in human history. 


Methods of Communication 


of the Ancients : 


A study of the advancement of the art of com- 
munication throughout history is interesting. 
Prehistoric man, so far a8 we know, depended 
solely upon “word of mouth,” delivered person- 
ally or perhaps by messenger. So did even the 
more civilized ancients of Egypt, Babylonia, 
Assyria and other great empires of the dawn of 
civilization, until, as knowledge increased, mes- 
sages were scratched in rude hieroglyphics upon 
wax or even clay tablets; later, upon papyrus and 
then upon parchment, but delivery was always 
dependent upon the hands of a messenger. 


In the Middle Ages the art of writing was de- 
veloped; later, Guttenberg invented printing, but 
it is significant of the extraordinary progress of 
our own times, that, through all the centuries of 
the known history of the world, it was not until 
during the last century that mankind had discoy- 
ered a dependable way of really rapid communica- 
tion between distant points. 

The ancient Aztecs and perhaps other races 
had their rude heliographs; the American Indian 
used his smoke signal; the African savage his 
tom-tom code, but these and other methods of 
the kind were simply make-shifts, for emergen- 
cies, unavailable for individual communication. 

The celebrated “Pony Express” and other pos- 
tal systems of the olden days here and in other 
countries were slow, limited to the speed of horse 
and coach, dependent upon wind, tide and wave. 
No rapid, instantaneous system of wide-spread 
communication was discovered, through all his- 
tory, until less than 100 years ago. 


The Telegraph and Telephone: 


In 1752 Benjamin Franklin flew his famous 
kite and captured a spark of lightning, but it was 
not until 1838 that Professor Morse demonstrated 
the availability of electrical energy for the com- 
munication of thought, by the invention of the 
electric telegraph. 

This was the first great step toward instantane- 
ous universal communication; but even the tele- 
graph, wonderful as it was and is, and filling, as it 
does, its own place in the modern system of rapid 
communication between distant points, was not 
and is not a system of personal, individual com- 
munication, by which one man may actually 
speak to or listen to another, over intervening 
space great or small. 

Then, in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented 
the electric telephone. Every school boy has 
heard the story of this wonderful discovery—for 
it was as much the discovery of a principle in the 
combination of electricity, sound waves and 
acoustics as an invention, and has heard how, 
after years of exasperating, disheartening experi- 
ments the then young professor of a “School of 
Vocal Physiology” finally evolved a curious ma- 
chine that one day in March, 1876, repeated over 
a wire the words: “Mr. Watson, come here; I 
want you,” and the telephone was a reality. 


The Story of Alexander Bell: 


The story of the electric telephone reads like a 
romance and is replete with curious and astonish- 
ing happenings. 

Enthusiastically continuing work upon his ma- 
chine, the young inventor, with the help of his 
loyal assistant, Thomas A. Watson, produced a 
telephone for exhibition at the Philadelphia Cen- 
tennial. Even then, excepting for the provi- 
dential appearance of the Emperor of Brazil, who 


happened to take interest in it, the great inven- 
tion would probably have passed back into ob- 
scurity. Through Dom Pedro’s influence, scien- 
tific men took notice of the Bell telephone, and it 
was awarded a “Certificate of Merit.” 


Even after that, however, it was for some time 
looked upon as merely a scientific toy, no good 
for practical, every day use, and it was not until 
some years later, after many vicissitudes and 
trials had been passed through by Bell and a few 
men who had the nerve to back his enterprise, 
that the telephone came to be recognized as a 
most valuable and wonderful addition to the 
world’s methods of communication between peo- 
ple and between distant points. 


The First Telephone System: 


The first practical long-distance demonstration 
of the telephone as a device for transmitting 
sound was made by Bell and his associates in 
1876, when a telegraph line between New York 
and Boston was borrowed for half an hour, and 
in the presence of noted men, a tune was sent over 
the wire by telephone. 


The first sustained conversation over the tele- 
phone was held in October, 1876, between Boston 
and Cambridge, when a telegraph line, with a 
telephone attached to each end, was used for the 
purpose for three hours. 

It was not until May, 1877, however, that any 
man had the temerity to actually pay for the use 
of a telephone, and then a man in a Massachusetts 
town leased two telephones for twenty dollars— 
the first money ever paid for a telephone. 

The first telephone exchanges were gradually 
opened, naturally on a very small scale, in New 
Haven and Bridgeport, Conn.; New York City 
and Philadelphia. 

In August, 1877, there was a total of 778 tele- 
phones in use in the world. That was 43 years 
ago. 


Millions of Telephones in Use Now: 


So great, however, was the universal need for 
just such a method of communication, and so 
efficient and satisfactory a method is the tele- 
phone, that at the end of the first 40 years of its 
life, there were, according to the United States 
Government Census of telephones for the year 
1917, almost 12,000,000 telephones in use in the 
United States alone. Several million more tele- 
phones are in use in other countries of the world, 
although, the greatest development has been in 
the United States. 

There are now more telephones in Illinois than 
are to be found on the continents of Asia, Africa, 
and South America, with the Orient thrown in 
for good measure; there are more than in Eng- 
land, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal and 
Norway combined. 

Chicago, alone, can account for more tele- 
phones than can the latter six countries. 

The number of messages handled daily in Chi- 
cago, averages, 2,500,000 ; there are 1,922,971 miles 


of wire in service, the increase last year having 
been 66,227 miles. The company has more than 
16,000 employees. The operators are located in 
175 exchanges, scattered throughout the city and 
the suburbs. In order to give Chicago this serv- 
ice, $89,925,000 has been obtained from investors 
and spent on equipment. 


Illinois, in all, has more than 500 separate tele- 
phone companies. Their wires now link practic- 
ally every farm house, as well as the cities and 
towns, with the furthest reaches of the outside 
world. These companies are owned by about 
80,000 securities holders, the majority of them 
residents of the communities where these com- 
panies give service. 

The telephone has become so universal and so 
necessary to our daily life that there is scarcely a 
farmhouse in the country not connected on a 
rural line, and new telephones are being installed 
at the rate of approximately 750,000 a year in the 
United States. 


Not all this development has come, of course, 
from the companies which grew out of the orig- 
inal company formed by the inventor and his as- 
sociates. After the expiration of the original pat- 
ents, many other telephone companies were or- 
ganized, and constructed telephone exchanges 
and long distance lines, these companies being 
known as “Independent” companies, this distin- 
guishing them from the “Bell” telephone system. 
Many of these companies have grown into large, 
progressive telephone systems, operating, all to- - 
gether, about four and one-half million of the 
total number of telephones now in service in the 
United States, and thousands of miles of the long 
distance wire systems of the country. 


Many Telephone Companies in 
United States: 


The magnitude of the telephone business is 
amazing. Referring again to the Government 
Census of 1917, there were in that year more than 
53,000 separate telephone systems or companies 
in the United States, operating all together over 
28,000,000 miles of wire—sufficient wire, someone 
has figured, to reach from the earth to the moon 
more than 100 times. 

These companies, operating thousands of tele- 
phone exchanges in the different villages, towns 
and cities of the country, employed in 1917 about 
270,000 people, of whom around 170,000 were 
women. 

They had a combined investment-of more than 
two billions of dollars. That was in 1917—the 
business has shown a steady growth since then, 
so the figures would naturally be larger today. 

There are between 600,000 and 700,000 men and 
women of the country constituting the ownership 
of the telephone system of the nation, they hav- 
ing invested their savings in the stocks and bonds 
through which the money was obtained for the 
building of the plants and lines which make it 
possible for the nation to have this service. 


The number of local telephone talks during 
1917 was estimated by the Government census ex- 
perts to be in the neighborhood of 22,000,000,000 
—more than 63,000,000 talks every day in the 
year! Such has been the development in the use 
of the telephone in the United States in only 40 
years—a development that has been possible be- 
cause the telephone service of America is not 
only the most efficient, but the cheapest in the 
world. 


What Makes the Telephone Talk? 


“What makes the telephone talk?” is a question 
frequently asked. Well, of course, the telephone 
doesn’t talk at all—nor does it even actually 

carry sound along the wires. 

' ‘The telephone at one end of the line simply 
takes the sound and converts it into certain elec- 
trical manifestations that are carried along the 
wire to the receiving telephone, which converts 
them back into sound again. (See diagram 


No. 1.) 
What a Telephone is Composed of: 


The telephone proper consists of the trans- 
mitter—into which you talk, and the receiver— 
which you put to your ear. The balance of the 
telephone set is simply the case, box, or so on, 
containing the necessary apparatus and switches 
, to carry out the purposes of the instrument. 

Both transmitter and receiver are fitted with 
thin metal diaphragms. 

When you talk into the transmitter your voice 
sets up sound waves, or air waves, just as a circle 
of waves is made in the water when you pitch a 
stone into a pond. 

Back of the transmitter diaphragm is a tiny 
metal box filled with carbon granules. 

As the sound waves made by your voice beat 
against the diaphragm, which is very sensitive to 
them, it vibrates in unison; the little granules are 
compressed to an extent depending upon the 
loudness of your voice, and this action causes the 
lowering and raising, of a weak electrical current 
that was put onto the line, through your trans- 
mitter, when you lifted your receiver from the 
hook. 

This current travels along the line to the 
diaphragm in the receiver of the other telephone, 
exactly as it is put onto the line by the action of 
the diaphragm in your telephone, and it repro- 
duces in the receiver diaphragm the action of the 
transmitter diaphragm—sending out of the re- 
ceiver sound waves similar to the waves going 
into the transmitter. Therefore, your voice or 
the sound that goes into the transmitter of the 
one telephone is reproduced exactly by the re- 
ceiver of the other telephone. 

Only a very weak electrical current is used on 
a telephone line for talking, but a slightly higher, 
though harmless, current is used for ringing the 
telephone bells. Neither current is high enough 
to be dangerous—the talking current could not 


-be felt even if the telephone were not well in- 
sulated, as it is. 


The Central Station or 
Telephone Exchange: 


The invention of the telephone instrument 
alone, or even the discovery of the principle of 
electrical telephony, would have made the tele- 
phone exchange possible without the develop- 
ment also of some form of central station, or 
switching board, where any one telephone in the 
system could be connected with any other tele- 
phone in the system. 

Without this, no one could have ever had more 
than a “private line” with possibly 20 telephones 
on it, altogether, to which he could talk. 

The development of the telephone switchboard 
was a task by itself, but so well have the tele- 
phone engineers and designers performed their 
work during the past 40 years that the switch- 
board of today is a marvel of mechanical and 
electrical ingenuity, and of efficiency and depend- 
ability. 


What One Sees at the Central 


Station: 


There are three general types of telephone 
switching. 

The first, known as the “magneto” or “local 
battery” system, is about the only system prac- 
ticable for the small town or rural system. The 
batteries giving current for talking are contained 
in the telephone instrument, and the current for 
signaling the central station operator is generated 
by turning a crank on the telephone, which oper- 
ates a hand generator inside the instrument. This 
is the simplest system of telephony, and the most 
practical, efficient and dependable for the smaller 
telephone exchange. The magneto system is 
commonly used for all rural telephone lines. 

The second system, the most generally used at 
the present time for large telephone exchanges, 
is known as the “common battery” type, current 
both for talking and ringing being furnished by 
batteries or generators in the central office. In 
this system the telephone user simply removes 
the receiver from its hook on the telephone, this 
action signaling the operator by lighting a small 
lamp on the switchboard, or by some similar 
method. 

For large exchanges, such as are in the great 
cities, what is known as a “mutiple” switchboard 
must be used. This is a switchboard so con- 
structed that any operator at the board can make 
a connection between a patron calling and any 
other telephone connected with the board. This 
is arranged by repeating or “multiplying” within 
reach of each operator along the switchboard, the 
connecting “jacks” or terminals for every tele- 
phone. It is a very complicated and expensive 
system to install, costing sometimes four to five 
times the price of the switchboard without the 
multiple feature, per line connected. 

In very large cities the telephone company will 


operate a number of telephone exchanges, each_ 
of which will be designated by a certain name or 
“prefix,” such as “Main,” “Superior,” and so on. 
Subscribers connected to one exchange must be 
“trunked” over to the other exchange when they 
call for a subscriber connected there. 


The “Automatic” or “Machine 


Switching” System: 


In a number of places there is coming into use 
the “automatic” or “machine switching” system 
of telephony, in which the switching between 
telephones is done by automatic machinery, in- 
stead of manually (physically) by telephone oper- 
ators: Another system, combining certain fea- 
tures of both automatic and manual telephone 
exchanges, known as the “semi-automatic” type 
of exchange, is in use in some places. 

In any manual telephone system the cost, or 
investment, in the central office apparatus is very 
high, in many cases amounting to as much as an 
average of $250 for each telephone in service at 
the exchange. It is, of course, higher with the 
mechanical system. 

The central station apparatus also requires 
constant watching and repair, as it is very in- 
tricate and complicated, having literally thou- 
sands and thousands of wires connected together, 
with innumerable electrical contacts which must 
constantly be kept in fine adjustment. Such in- 
tricate apparatus is naturally subject to difficul- 
ties from any extreme of heat, cold, moisture, etc., 
and expert switchboard men constantly must 
watch and work upon it to keep it in shape for 
giving efficient telephone service. 


The Outside Plant: 


Besides the expensive, intricate and delicately 
adjusted central station equipment, with the 
operators constantly on duty, the whole of the 
24 hours, to give service to the public, and be- 
sides the telephone instruments in the homes or 
business places of the subscribers, the telephone 
company must have and maintain an adequate 
system of poles, wires, cables, and so on, on or 
under the street of the city, over which it can 
reach its subscribers to connect their telephones 
with the central station. 

The telephone exchange is peculiar in itself, 
and differs from its electrical cousin, the electric 
light and power plant, and from such other utility 
companies as the gas and water supplying con- 
cerns, in this way: 

The electric light company can supply any 
number of subscribers with current for electric 
lighting or power, from one pair of wires, or cir- 
cuit, and the water and gas companies can supply 
their own commodities to any number of cus- 
tomers from the same “mains.” But the tele- 
phone company must furnish a separate line or 
circuit for each subscriber—excepting, of course, 
those on “party lines,” for which service the rate 
is cheaper, This necessitates a correspondingly 


high investment per subscriber, in the telephone 
exchange. 


How Wires and Cables are Laid 


or Strung: 


The wires from the telephone central station to” 
the various subscribers’ telephones usually leave 
the central office in cables, either in the air or un- 
derground. From the office they may be carried 
considerable distance underground, or in aerial 
cables, depending upon the size of the city and 
of the exchange, and the class of construction. 

The wires, when in the cables, are hardly big- 
ger than a large thread, and are made of copper. 
Each wire is wrapped around with perfectly dry 
paper, this paper and such small amount of dry 
air as is included in the cable when it is covered, 
insulates the wires from each other. 

The covering of the cable is a sheath of lead, 
slightly mixed with tin or other alloy to give it 
tensile strength. 

Such cables will contain from 20 up to 1,800 or 
more wires, and are therefore known as “10 pair,” 
“900 pair” cables, and so on. 

The cable sheaths must be kept water tight. 
Should water get into the cables it will destroy 
the insulation, and “cross talk” (crossed lines) 
will result in the telephones served by the wetted 
wires, or else the telephone will be “dead” alto- 
gether. 

Sometimes constant swaying of aerial cables, 
or rubbing against a limb or other surface, causes 
the sheath to crystallize ; then tiny cracks or holes 
appear and a hard, driving rain wets the wires in- 
side and causes telephone “trouble.” 

That part of the cable must then be “boiled 
out” in paraffin, which extracts all moisture, and 
a new section of lead sheath, or a water tight 
patch must be put on. 


Wiring System Very Delicate: 


Underground cables are laid in conduits, which 
are pipes made of baked clay or other material, 
with a varying number of “ducts,” laid in 
trenches dug under the streets, and then covered. 

The conduit ducts end in “manholes” at appro- 
priate intervals; the manholes are sufficiently 
large for workmen to enter them and stand 
erect; they can be identified on the streets by the 
round, iron covers lying flush with the surface of 
the street. The cables are drawn into the ducts, 
from the manholes, after the conduits are laid. 

Sooner or later, though, the wires must be 
brought out of the cables and be carried along the 
tops of poles, to be distributed to the different 
telephones. The cables end in “terminals” lo- 
cated in a round metal can or a wooden box with 
a door, which is placed on the pole, the under- 
ground cable being brought up the pole to the 
terminal. 


The Terminals: 


In these terminals larger iron or copper wires 
are connected with the pairs from the cables, and 


these wires run along the poles for such distance 
as is necessary, to the pole nearest the house 
where the telephone is located. 


Then a pair of wires, called the “drop wires,” is 
run from the pole to the house, and is terminated 
on the outside of the house, connecting there with 
a pair of “inside” wires which enter the house and 
are connected with the telephone. 


The kind and size of the poles used depends 
upon the class of construction, and upon the num- 
ber of wires or the size of the cables to be car- 
ried. White cedar poles, cut in the forests of 
Michigan or other northern states, are used in 
many city exchanges; others use cypress or other 
native timber, sometimes protected against decay 
by creosote or other preservative. The cross 
arms are often of Washington fir; the wooden 
pins, upon which the glass insulators are screwed, 
of locust. 


Pole lines are guyed by heavy guy strand as 
protection against heavy winds, sleet, and so on. 
Similar strand is stretched from pole to pole 
when aerial cable is used, and the cable is hung 
from this “messenger” strand, which takes the 
strain off the soft lead sheath of the cable. 

Such, in brief—and very briefly—is the prin- 
cipal outside plant of the telephone exchange. 
Divided, as to cost, by the number of telephones 
it serves, the outside construction may cost as 
high as an average of $100 to $200 for each tele- 
phone in the exchange, depending upon the size 
of the town, the character of the construction, 
and so on. 


The Management of the 
Telephone Company: 


The management of the telephone company 
has a triple responsibility ; to the public, to fur- 
nish good dependable telephone service; to the 
employees, to pay them adequately for their serv- 
ice and to deal with them justly; to the investors 
who furnish the money to build the lines and give 
the public service, to produce for them a reason- 
able and fair payment in the shape of interest on 
their investment. 

The rates the telephone company may charge 
for its service are under the regulation of public 
authority ; in most states, by state board or Pub- 
lic Utility Commissions; in a few, by city coun- 
cils or local authorities. 


Where the Telephone Company's 
Earnings Go: 


The company’s income naturally depends upon 
and is limited by its rates, as does also the service 
it is able to give the public. Of the cost of mak- 
ing its service, 55 cents or more of each dollar 
goes to the employees for salaries and wages; 
about 20 cents to 22 cents out of each dollar for 
material used in repair and upkeep work, and 15 


cents to 20 cents for sundry and miscellaneous 
expenses, stich as insurance, stationery and post- 
age, collecting, office expense, rent, light, heat 
and the hundred and other expenses in running a 
business. 


Besides the direct cost of manufacturing the 
service, taxes on the property must be paid to 
City, County, and State; and to the Federal Gov- 
ernment on the company’s income. 


The company must also be able to set aside a 
reserve for the constant wear and tear on its 
property so that it can replace the plant, as that 
plant wears out from use, age, and because of new 
inventions and improvements. This item alone 
amounts annually to a substantial sum—some- 
times as high as seven or eight per cent of the 
value of the plant. 


All the foregoing items of expense and cost 
must be provided for before the investors in the 
company can receive interest or dividends upon 
the money they have invested in the property. 


How Company Management is 
Divided: 


The management of the business naturally 
divides itself into three distinct operating heads: 


Traffic, which refers to the employment, train- 
ing and supervision of the operators and oper- 
ating forces. 


Plant, which refers to the construction and up- 
keep of the property. 

Commercial, which refers to the billing and 
collecting of the service accounts, making of con- 
tract with patrons, advertising, soliciting, and in, 
general the “business end” of the business. 


Besides these, there will usually be an Auditing 
Department, keeping the company’s books. If 
the company has an income of as much as $10,000 
annually, it is required by law to keep its books 
in the manner prescribed by the Interstate Com- 
merce Commission, and State Commissions, and 
to make annual sworn reports of its earnings and 
expenses, to those bodies. 


The telephone company is, therefore, at all 
times, under the complete regulatory supervision 
of a national, state or local authority—sometimes 
under the supervision of two or more of them. 


* KC * *K xX 


The foregoing narrative is, naturally, much 
condensed; many interesting facts about the 
business have been omitted for lack of space. 
The subject of long distance telephone lines—a 
business in itselfi—is not presented here because 
limits. of space make it impossible to cover it 
properly. 

The telephone business is a big business, grow- 
ing larger all the time; one of fascinating interest 
to the layman, well worthy of study by those 
interested in timely topics, and in the develop- 
ment of the great public utility institutions of 
the country, today. 


3 0112 042800 


How You “Talk” Through the Telephone 


(Diagram No. 1) 





As has been explained you do not actually 
“talk” through the telephone, but stir up electri- 
cal currents at your end of the wire, which then 
travel over the wire and are converted back into 
sound again in the receiver of the person with 
whom you are conversing. 

We will follow a telephone call through the 
transmitter (the instrument into which you 
speak) over the wire and into the receiver (the in- 
strument the person to whom you are talking has 
at his or her ear) and see what happens. 

Follow the letters on the diagram and you will 
see what happens. 


(1) :—As you speak into the transmitter (A), 
your voice makes sound waves. These waves 
enter the transmitter (B). 


(2) :—Entering the transmitter (B) the waves 
encounter a button of granulated carbon, which 
is attached to a thin disk known as a diaphragm 
(C). This vibrates and makes the electric current 
fluctuate and vary, as shown by (D), just as the 
air vibrates in (A)—or just as you make it 
vibrate when you speak. 

(3) :—Traveling over the wire, the vibrating 
electric current enters the receiver. There it finds 
a magnet coil (FE). The electric current causes 
it to fluctuate and vary exactly as the current (D) 
fluctuates. It goes on through to (F), or the re- 
ceiver diaphragm, which is made of iron. This 
fluctuates and vibrates as the strength of the 


How to Use Th 


Rhetoric, Oral English, and Current Topic 
classes; Suggested topics for theme writing; 
Oral English and Current Topics discussion. 


1. A Visit to the Local Telephone Plant. 


2. To What Class of Users is the Telephone 
Most Valuable. 


3. Methods of Communication of The Ancients. 
How the Telephone Came Into Existence. 
5. The Home Without the Telephone. 


re 


magnet’s (E) pull upon it is increased or de- 
creased, or as you have talked. 

(4) :—The receiver’s diaphragm then throws 
off the sound (G) waves in the air between the 
diaphragm and the listener’s ear in exact imita- 
tion of (or consonance with) the transmitter 
diaphragm (B). 

Because the two persons indulging in the con- 
versation, as has been noted, are such important 


factors in making it successful, it is necessary | 


that they make proper and careful use of the tele- 
phone. It is evident that, if the numberless varia- 
tions of sound which accompany human speech 
are to be transmitted accurately by telephone, 
not only must the apparatus be kept in careful 
and delicate adjustment, but that the line wires, 
or circuit, must be absolutely free from 
“grounds” or “leaks,” or other conditions which 
might interfere with its use. 

The fact that today the service is so universally 
satisfactory as to transmission; that one can not 
only hear what is said but immediately recognize 
who is speaking, by the quality of the voice; this 
really wonderful but commonplace result is the 
best evidence of the extent to which the art of 
telephony has now been perfected and is applied 
in practice in the service of the public. A very 
slight defect will prevent successiul transmission 
of speech, but of the millions of conversations 
attempted by telephone every day, the number so 
prevented is infinitesimally small. 


is Bulletin: 


6. The Story A Telephone Told. 

7. A Four Minute Review of this Bulletin. 

8. What Kind of a Place Would This Com- 
munity Be Without the Public Utilities. 

For Debate: 

Resolved: That Alexander Graham Bell was 
a Greater Benefactor to the Human Race 
than was any Other Inventor. 

Resolved: That the Period of Great Inven- 
tions is about Over. 








For Additional Bulletins Please Address: 


Illinois Committee on Public Utility Information 


203 South Dearborn Street 
CHICAGO, ILL. 








tI 


